Google's back in the laptop business, with this, the Pixelbook [not the "Chromebook Pixel" -- oops!]
As you can see, it is a beautiful, well-made aluminum laptop, with a high resolution touchscreen
that you can flip around into a tablet mode.
The question for this review isn't is it any good, because it's very good at being a Chromebook
No, the question is Is it worth spending $1000 on this Chromebook?
And there are other questions!
Can it replace a MacBook or a Windows laptop — or even an iPad Pro?
To answer those questions, we need to talk about the software.
Chrome OS, especially with Android apps, is more capable than it's ever been.
I can use it for my job, for 90 percent of the stuff I need to do.
And I'm also lucky enough to have other computers around for when I need to finish that last ten percent
And everybody's ten percent is different.
For me it's video editing.
For you, it might be a great Mac app or a really powerful Excel spreadsheet
Or a dope iPad game
I do believe that Android apps are going to get better at filling those gaps over time
But it's going to take awhile
I wouldn't buy this in the hopes that the situation is going to get better
in the next few months, or even the next year.
But today, now, this machine is much more powerful than most people think.
Web apps on Chrome are great, You can use them separate windows instead of tabs and
split screen them.
Many of them work offline.
Then there are the Android apps.
You might have heard that they have been running in Beta on Chrome OS for awhile
And that beta hasn't been, well, any good at all.It's been terrible Now that beta is over, the situation is better, but it’s still a little tricky.
Now they're out of beta on this machine and I can report that they are better
But the situation is, well, a little bit tricky
Really, the main thing I've run into is that it's weird to have two versions of the same app.
Slack, for instance, has a great web app but in tablet mode the android app is better.
So you end up kind of juggling them in an awkward way.
But not all Android apps are this nice.
Most don't have freely resizable windows.
The good news is that running them doesn't bring the machine to a halt like it used to
on other chromebooks.
Some of that, I'm sure, is that this thing is very powerful, but a lot it is bugfixes.
We should talk about some other chrome os changes.
The Google Assistant is here, get to it by hitting this button
or by saying Okay Google
There's also Google search, of course
Just like on the Pixel phone, it's integrated with the on-device search
There's a new launcher that's nicer and does a slightly better job of helping you distinguish
between web and android apps.
There's also this pen, the Pixelbook pen.
It's a hundred bucks and the battery in it should last about a year.
You can do usually note taking stuff, even use handwriting recognition.
It's a full wacom stylus, so you can do a bunch of drawing tricks with angle and pressure.
But that stuff only works in a few apps, ones that are updated to support it.
In those apps, the lag is barely noticeable.
In other apps, it's pretty bad.
Hopefully they'll get updated.
Anyway, I'm not really a stylus guy but my colleague James Bareham is.
He says it feels better than the Apple Pencil on the iPad.
The difference is that the iPad Pro and Windows machines have way more software
If the software support were there for it, that fight would be much more interesting,
but as it is the iPad or a Windows Machine really does has the edge on pens.
The other thing the Pen does is help with image searches.
You can just hold this button down and circle stuff,
and the google assistant will search for the thing you circled.
If you have a pixel phone, you can turn on instant tethering.
Heck, if you have any recent android phone you can unlock this computer with your phone's
fingerprint sensor.
But not everything in the software is rosy.
The files app can be a little twitchy, for example.
And tablet mode is just annoying.
It's fine for reading or watching a movie, but you can't do split screen at all and a
bunch of android apps are clumsy at best when you switch over.
This isn't as good at managing Windows on your screen as, well, Windows
So yeah, Google has some more work to do there.
Let's geek out about hardware
You'd think there's only so many ways to make a laptop, even a convertible one like this.
But Google has managed to make the Pixelbook look and feel unique.
More than unique, actually, from a materials and build quality perspective, this feels
every inch like the thousand dollars it costs.
It's made out of aluminum, with a glass screen and this glass shade behind the lid, which
makes it look like like it belongs next to the Pixel phones.
It's also sturdy as hell, with zero flex.
It weighs just about two and a half pounds and is a little under half an inch thick.
The industrial design is also unique, with these squared off edges and symmetrical elements.
It's just really nice.
There are a bunch of details here that are smart.
Like the palmrests, which are made of silicone and feel better than metal to rest your palms
on.
I'm hoping they won't get grimy, but if they do I bet they're easier to clean than the
fabric on Microsoft's Surface devices.
The clever bit about those palm rests is that when you're using it tablet mode, they act
like anti-skid feet.
They also do a good job of keeping the keyboard from touching the screen when it's closed.
Look at this little gap here.
And the keyboard is also great.
It has more key travel than a Macbook without being too much thicker.
I should also point out that it is backlit, which is a stupid thing to point out
But a lot of Chromebooks don't have that, which is super annoying
The mouse is also really great. It's matted glass and it's got a nice click.
But I will say that it's a little annoying that when the laptop is closed you can squeeze
right there and click it.
As for the screen, it's a 12.3-inch display with 3 by 2 aspect ratio and the resolution
is 2400 x 1600.
It's really good, responsive to touch, and sharp.
The bezels here, though, are a little bigger than I'd like.
There are other convertibles with smaller bezels, so I don't buy the standard line that
they make it easier to hold in tablet mode.
So sure, your thousand bucks pays for the design, but it's also paying for high end specs
It has a proper Intel Core i5 7th-generation processor, 8 gigs of ram, and 128 gigs of storage.
That's way more than normal for a chromebook, but you'll use it for Android apps, downloaded
movies, and so on.
Like several recent machines, it runs that powerful processor without any fans — and
if you are a crazy person you can spend up to 1650 to get 16 gigs of ram and a faster
processor and way more storage..
And as for performance: it's a screamer, With Chromebooks, I usually have to give this speech
about how you measure them by how many tabs they can run before they bog down.
Not a problem here.
This runs Chrome better than any computer I've used — at least one that isn't some
fifteen hundred dollar plus pro machine.
I mean, that's how it should be with this machine, but I'm glad to report that it is.
Google is claiming ten hours of battery life, but I'm not quite getting that.
It's possible — actually it's true — that I have been pushing this machine pretty hard.
But I wouldn't trust this thing past seven or eight hours unless you're being careful.
Luckily, it charges super fast.
And because it uses standard USB-C, I was even able to eke out some extra time on the
airplane with one of those in-seat USB ports.
Speaking of airplanes, this is what laptops should be now
Apple, good on you for refusing to put a touchscreen on your laptops
And Microsoft, good on you for making a traditional laptop.
But this is just so convenient, especially when you're on an airplane, that it should be the shape of laptops from now on.
Look, I get it there are a million things the Mac is better at than this.
Same goes for Windows and the iPad pro.
They hit that last 10 percent of what you need more often.
But this thing is good at being simple.
It's always up to date, and its very good at doing Chrome things.
Here is what the Pixelbook is: a supercomputer for web apps, with a side of Android.
I am not going to tell you if that's worth a thousand bucks to you
And I'm not going to tell you that it can replace your current computer
But I am going to tell you that Google is closer than it's ever been befoe to even saying that it's possible
For a platform that's only six years old, that's impressive.